Photo Albums

Desert Rats

11/27/2016

Robolights is the artistic creation of Kenny Irwin (standing over there with me - we were lucky enough to spot him strollin' around), a lifelong Palm Springs resident who has been working on this masterwork for 30 years. Looking much like a dystopian Small World ride, Robolights examines the materialism that undermines spirituality and feeds the military industrial complex in a basically light-hearted way using mainly found and discarded materials. Or maybe I'm readin' too much into it, but that's what I got.

Anyway, Kenny's kinda like Noah Purifoy with about 10 million Xmas lights -

good social consciousness and a wacky sense of humor. Go see his set up (it's at the family homestead in Palm Springs) if you're anywhere around the area. And please donate what you can. Kenny ain't exactly getting rich off his art projects and electricity costs a lot. Worse, he's having issues with the city planning commission over his extension cords and to top it off, his dad. Kenny Irwin Sr., passed on back in July. Hasn't been an easy year for this guy.

Salaam alaikum, Kenny! Hoping that you overcome these obstacles and have a happy, prosperous and creative 2017.

Now Robolights is not a children's entertainment (but if your kids like robots, they'll lose their minds with happiness) and there's some adult content, so use your judgement. Over in the left column, there's a whole photo album from this year's Robolights. He switches it up all the time.

PS - Update: Kenny's still in trouble with the city, but now it's an inflatable Santa on his roof, and an if-fy wall over by the dovecote. Have a care if yer walkin' on a windy night. Also - the Robolights docents and volunteers are just awesome.

07/27/2015

Y'all know from my previous posts that I'm a big Noah Purifoy fan. The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum is one of the finest conglomerations of assemblage art there is, hands down, so I was mighty curious to see how that could be translated from large-scale pieces in the California desert to an austere, interior white-walled museum setting. Disregard that orange wall over there, it's an anomaly.

Noah's work (I've got to call him Noah - I might not have known him personally, but I feel like he's an old friend) was inspired to a degree by Sam Rodia's master work, The Watts Towers, but his stuff is smaller, funnier, and more about social message than beauty. It has funk. It's dirty. It's about taking what society discards and making something meaningful out of it. You can't look at his art and not smile.

The LA County Museum of Art [LACMA] is hosting an exhibit of some of Noah's select work until Sept. 27, so jump on it while you can. They're calling it Junk Dada, which I guess is as good a term as any for his more surreal pieces. Over on the right, you can see that they left a dove's nest in one of the sculptures, which is a nice touch, and they also anchored the pieces with a sandy base that touches on their desert home. Other parts of the exhibit explore some wall-mounted items (calling them paintings or collages or quilts is a little too specific) plus some mention of his work in the Civil Rights Movement.

Now, you've heard me harp about the Raven Jake Austerity Plan (there's going to be a lot of that this summer - I've got me some beer tastes on a water budget) and here's how LACMA is helping us out: On weekdays, after 3 p.m. to museum has free admission for LA County residents. If you go on a Friday, the museum is open til 8 and there's free jazz concerts. Grab a blanket, pack a picnic and you're all set for a romantic evening on the cheap. You can thank Jake later [wink].

11/13/2013

Y'all, last weekend I got an unexpected treat. Jane and I headed over to the LA Equestrian Center with Greg and Sigrid and Sherri to celebrate the arrival of 100 very special guests. These mules walked down the length of the LA Aqueduct to commemorate it's 100 year anniversary. Notice I didn't say "celebrate." The Owens Valley got the bad end of that deal.

It ain't often you get to see 100 of any kinda critter together like that, and even though they might'a beena bit shy of 100, it was still something to see. After they showed off their synchronized walking routines, the skinners removed their packs in record time and they got the opportunity to frisk around, roll in the dirt and enjoy some "horseplay." I had such a terrific time watchin' them mules cavort, I'm still smiling. Now I can't wait for Memorial Day weekend for Mule Days in Bishop.

10/17/2013

Just a reminder that it's gettin to be that time of year again - Celebrate the Centennial with a visit to the Michael White Adobe as Jane and Jeryd Pojawa reprise their roles as Michael White and Maria del Rosario.

This is a rare opportunity to see the Adobe in a festive atmosphere (it ain't open but once a year!) as the community comes out to celebrate Homecoming. Find out what you can do to help turn the Adobe into a Hall of Fame for Student Achievement. Please come by and say hello!

04/25/2013

I'm rarely taken with a place as much as I am with Noah Purifoy's Outdoor Desert Art Museum. There's so much stuff to look at that I'm gonna need three or four visits just to take it all in. Matter of fact, I might just move in as one of the displays. Now, I don't know too much about Noah, 'cept he lived in Watts for a spell, as did I. So I'll let his website tell it:

Born in Snow Hill, Alabama in 1917, Noah Purifoy lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California, where he died in 2004. He received an undergraduate degree from Alabama State Teachers College in 1943 and a graduate degree from Atlanta University in 1948. In 1956, just shy of his fortieth birthday, Purifoy received a BFA from Chouinard, now CalArts. His earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts Rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon (1966), a landmark group exhibition on the riots that traveled throughout the country. As a founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, Purifoy knew the community intimately.
His 66 Signs of Neon, in line with the postwar period’s fascination with the street and its objects, constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts. This strategy profoundly impacted artists then emerging in Los Angeles and beyond, such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge and Senga Nengudi, who all worked with him. For the twenty years that followed the rebellion, Purifoy dedicated himself to the found object, and to using art as a tool for social change. In the late 1980’s after eleven years of public policy work for the California Arts Council, where he initiated programs such as ‘Artists in Social Institutions,’ which brought art into the state prison system, Purifoy moved his practice out to the Mojave desert, where he lived for the last fifteen years of his life creating ten-acres full of large-scale sculpture on the desert floor. Constructed entirely from
junked materials, this otherworldly environment is one of California’s great art historical wonders.

The mission of the Noah Purifoy Foundation is to preserve and maintain Purifoy’s outdoor museum of assemblage sculpture as a permanent cultural center and park, and to promote greater public appreciation for the values embodied in Purifoy's work.

04/23/2013

Alright, I've been hearing this persistant rumor that the seed pods of the Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia, are edible. Not just in the sense of "it won't kill you," but like something you might actually want to eat. I'm talkin' about stuff like this:

The stems can be baked, and the blossoms, minus the bitter centers, can be cooked and eaten. The young flower stalks are edible. The flowers are edible raw or cooked as a potherb. Check them for insects before cooking or eating them. The seed pods and seeds are edible when they are young, raw or baked in ashes. They can be sliced, dried, and stored. They taste similar to banana.

Similar to the most bitter, alkaline bananas you can imagine, I guess...

Fruit of the Joshua Tree

The greenish-brown fruit of the Joshua Tree is oval and somewhat fleshy. The 2- to 4-inch-long fruit grows in clusters and is edible. According to "The Oxford Companion to Food," mature pods can be roasted and have a sweet, candy-like flavor. Each fruit contains many flat seeds, which are released on the ground when a fruit dries on the tree and falls to the ground in late spring.

Flowers and Pollination

The flowers of the Joshua tree are bell-shaped, slightly longer than an inch and have six creamy, yellowish-green sepals. The flowers are grouped into clusters, have an unpleasant odor and blossom mostly in the spring. The Joshua Tree, like most yuccas, relies on a single species, the female pronuba moth, for pollination. No other animal transfers the tree's pollen. The moth lays her eggs in the flowers and the hatched larvae feed on the seeds contained in the fruit.

Maybe it'd be better to just eat the moth...

And finally -

Edible Parts: Flowers; Fruit; Root; Seed; Seedpod.

Flowers - cooked. The flower buds, before opening, can be parboiled in salt water to remove the bitterness, drained and then cooked again and served like cauliflower. The opened flowers are rich in sugar and can be roasted and eaten as candy. Fruit - cooked. The fruits can be roasted then formed into cakes and dried for later use. Root - raw, boiled or roasted. Seed. Gathered and eaten by the local Indians. No further details are given, but it is probably ground into a powder and mixed with cornmeal or other flours and used for making bread, cakes etc. Immature seedpod. No more details given. [this is credited as Joshua Tree, but might actually be generic yucca]

If I were one of the locals; Cahuilla, Chemhuevi, Serrano et al, I'd tell the settlers to eat one just for a laugh.

Couple o' things: this has been one of the best years ever for Joshua Tree blooms, although now most of the bloomin' is over and they're poding up. Edibility? So far, so gross. So some kids have been hospitalized for eating a spoonful of cinnamon on a dare? So what? Doesn't even compare to the dreaded yucca pod. So if any of y'all actually have a recipe for Joshua Somethin'-or-Other I'd love to hear about it, 'cause it sure don't taste like banana!

Shout out to Gerard Ledonne from the Joshua Tree Saloon, the artist/owner of the Marrakesh Express here; it is truely a sight to make you smile. I've been assured that the "Hippy Bus" is in good working order and I sure would love to see it trolling Highway 62 sometime.

Y'all know I'm a sucker for a street piano. Turns out the one in Joshua Tree really has some history behind it.

Poor thing is as flat as can be - could really use a tuning. Now the public pianos I'm familiar with are mostly the ones in LA left from last year's Play Me I'm Yours project so I had to turn to Wikipedia to get schooled about this one:

The Public Piano Project in Joshua
Tree California began
as a public grand piano Valentine Gift to the community in 1995 as the Self Serve Serenade by
artist Piano Bob (aka Bob Fenger). In 2002 Piano Bob began a donated piano
consolidation project building a weather proof outdoor piano from the parts of
3 pianos and installed April 2004 in front of Joshua Tree Health Foods. It was
enjoyed by thousands of Joshua Tree National
Park Visitors and locals for nearly
2 years and was reinstalled 20 April 2012 at the Coyote Corner Gift Shop in
Joshua Tree as the first Public Prepared Piano. The piano is reminiscent of a Gamelan Orchestra prepared with
everyday items such as coins, screws, paper mutes, wedged into the strings in a
typical John
Cage manner(inventor of the prepared
piano in the 1940s also see Bob
Fenger's Acoustisizer at Prepared piano 2.10). The Public Prepared Piano is the
third phase of the Public Piano Project dedication to unknown closet
pianists, art in public places, and instant drum circle fun around a keyboard.
Through regular tuning and maintenance of the public pianos another opportunity presented itself
for the public to observe, learn and interact with the total Public Piano Project experience.
Questions like: how long does it stay in tune outside? The short answer: the
colder the better the more in tune. The fact that Joshua Tree is in the High Desert
above Palm Springs
with many 100 degree plus days in the summer gave numerous opportunities for
tuning, sharing and exchanging ideas. The artist's stated intention: 'The Public Piano Project creates
momentary beauty thoughts and ideas that resonate out across fields, parking
lots and sidewalks. It invites others to play along and gives way to song and
laughter, accidental bonding and new friends; even possibly an ephemeral center
of insight and change'. On 21 December 2012 Piano Bob launched his fourth phase
of the Public Piano Project with the Prepared and Unprepared dueling
pianos for peace at the Joshua Tree Hospice. Public Piano Locations Public Piano Tour Pictures 2007.

Why just the other day I was out in the desert, gettin' some gas and a hot dog and this beautiful woman was screaming "I LOVE YOUR SHIRT!" out her car window at me. That ain't so unusual. I've got a lot of nice shirts. What was unusual, though, was that I was wearing my LA Derby Dolls shirt and the screaming woman was Vodka Toxic of the University Brawlers. I chanced to see her play in a winning bout against the Fight Crew a few months back. This time around, she was on her way to Coachella and I was off to Parts Unknown. Just shows you ought to dress it up a little, 'cause you never know who you're going to meet.